


15x03 coda: a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

by contemplativepancakes



Series: Season 15 codas [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x03 coda, Angst, Coda, Episode: s15e03 The Rupture, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 11:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21178934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contemplativepancakes/pseuds/contemplativepancakes
Summary: They had stared at each for a beat, before Castiel was the one to finally look away. “Well, I don’t think there’s anything left to be said.”There was awful silence as Castiel gave Dean one more chance, but there was no response, and he decided he was done handing out chances. He didn’t need to add one more rejection to the ever growing list. It wasn’t until he turned to walk away that Dean asked, “Where are you going?”Castiel shook his head because with all of Dean’s silences, with all of his anger that’s been slicing into Castiel for the past two weeks, Dean had lost his right to know. “Jack’s dead. Chuck is gone. You and Sam have each other. I think it’s time for me to move on.”The only thing that broke the silence was the bunker door swinging shut behind him.He rethinks the last decade of his life, wondering how it’s seemed to have stretched so long when all the decades before had passed in the blink of an eye. His phone starts to vibrate in his coat pocket, and he pulls it out to see Sam calling him. Castiel shakes his head in anger that Dean couldn’t even work up the nerve to call Castiel himself.





	15x03 coda: a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Castiel is having the worst day that he can remember ever having. Admittedly, his memory has holes, but he’s pretty confident when he says that he can relate to one of the characters Metatron stuffed in his mind about having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It started with having to watch Belphegor parade around in Jack’s skin, mocking him, his true face writhing underneath Jack’s. It made Castiel nauseous when he could feel Belphegor’s eyes on him. His skin had crawled all day yesterday, but he didn’t have enough energy to do anything about it. He could only sigh dejectedly after Dean had rejected him, again. If Castiel wasn’t an angel, he might have lost count of how many times this had been. He _wishes _he didn’t have the exact count. It pains him to even think about.

Now, though, after walking out of the bunker with Dean doing absolutely nothing to ask him to stay, he thinks he finally gets it. Dean must have heard him loud and clear all of those other times. He thought what they had must have meant something, that it was good and pure and _real_, but he was obviously wrong. “You used to trust me, give me the benefit of the doubt. Now, you can barely look at me. My powers are failing. I’ve tried to talk to you, over and over, and you just don’t want to hear it. You don’t care. I’m dead to you. You still blame me for Mary,” Castiel had said, looking at Dean expectantly, but there was no response beyond an acknowledging tilt of his head.

They had stared at each for a beat, before Castiel was the one to finally look away. “Well, I don’t think there’s anything left to be said.”

There was awful silence as Castiel gave Dean one more chance, but there was no response, and he decided he was done handing out chances. He didn’t need to add one more rejection to the ever growing list. It wasn’t until he turned to walk away that Dean asked, “Where are you going?”

Castiel shook his head because with all of Dean’s silences, with all of his anger that’s been slicing into Castiel for the past two weeks, Dean had lost his right to know. “Jack’s dead. Chuck is gone. You and Sam have each other. I think it’s time for me to move on.”

The only thing that broke the silence was the bunker door swinging shut behind him.

“Sam and Dean are just using you. Don’t mistake that for caring. I can assure you that they don’t,” Castiel had spat at Belphegor earlier in the crypt.

“You learned that the hard way, didn’t you?” Belphegor had given him a smile Cas knew was aimed to hurt, to drive him and Dean apart, but even armed with that knowledge, it still stung. Castiel wanted to think that _wasn’t_ a lesson he had learned, but here he is, standing on the side of a road in Kansas, without anyone in the world to care about him, and trying to decide what to do now.

He rethinks the last decade of his life, wondering how it’s seemed to have stretched so long when all the decades before had passed in the blink of an eye. His phone starts to vibrate in his coat pocket, and he pulls it out to see Sam calling him. Castiel shakes his head in anger that Dean couldn’t even work up the nerve to call Castiel himself. He squeezes his phone in his palm, and the screen shatters into pieces, fine glass dust misting in the air. Castiel flings the phone as far as he can and sits down in the grass, hard. He’s sitting there so long; a truck comes to idle beside him. “Need a ride?” a man leers at him.

“Yes, thank you,” he says as he climbs in, ignoring the man’s wandering eyes all over him.

Castiel makes it to Utah with the man before he’s distracted from his hypervigilance by Dean praying to him. _Caaaas, come home, baby, I miss you. _Castiel can hear Dean’s drunkenness through the prayer, and it makes him stiffen. He doesn’t want this if Dean can only actually talk to him while he’s drunk. Castiel catches a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turns to see the man fumbling across the seats, reaching for the buttons of Castiel’s shirt. Castiel catches his hand tiredly, breaking the man’s pinky without a thought. “Get out!” the man screams, and Castiel does.

He wanders into a diner and orders some coffee so he has an excuse to sit down. He shouldn’t feel this tired, but he can feel an ache deep in his bones. He supposes it’s more of his powers leaching away, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that. Permanent humanity hadn’t seemed that terrifying of a concept when he was with Dean, but he doesn’t know anymore. He flags down his waitress and asks if he can borrow her phone, giving her a pitiful smile. She smiles back at him and fishes it out of her pocket.

“Thank you,” Castiel says as he dials numbers that are engrained into his memory.

It rings once, twice, three times, and then, “Nora?”

“Hello? Steve? Is that you? Oh my goodness, it’s so good to hear from you!”

Castiel can count the number of times he’s cried in his millennia of existence on one hand, and he certainly didn’t expect for one of those times to be here in this diner with its sticky formica tabletops, but he can feel tears dripping down his nose at just the sound of Nora’s voice. “Hi, Nora. I just, uh, wanted to check in. How’s Tanya?”

Castiel can feel Nora’s skepticism through the line, but she plays along. “Tanya’s a real terror. She’s definitely making up for all those times she let me sleep through the night.”

Castiel snorts and manages a tearful smile. “Hey, where are you?” Nora asks, “Want to swing through Rexford for a few days?”

The waitress is looking at him in concern now, but he can’t help the sob that bubbles up from his throat. “That’d be great.”

“Fantastic! I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” Castiel whispers.

Nora’s curtain pulls back when Castiel’s hotwired car rumbles to a stop by the curb. He opens his door, and Nora is running to meet him. “Steve!” she exclaims as she pulls him into a crushing hug.

Castiel brings his arms up around her, but mostly he lets himself take comfort in the hold. “Come in, come in, I made supper!” Nora says, and Castiel follows her inside.

Castiel sniffs the air of her home, and it’s just like he remembered. His stomach grumbles at the smell of the food, and he looks down at himself in alarm.

“So what brings you here? You don’t call, you don’t write…” Nora pokes him in the ribs.

“I’m sorry. I just- needed somewhere to be, and you’ve always been so kind,” Cas says, and he can feel tears pooling in his eyes again.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asks, and Castiel finds himself crying. “Is it more boy trouble?”

Castiel’s heaving breaths too hard to answer at this point, and he thuds onto the couch. Nora sinks down next to him and rubs soothing circles on his back.

“It’s Dean,” he finally gets out.

Nora’s features harden almost imperceptibly. “I thought we talked about him,” she says lightly.

“We did, and things were good. They were so good,” he says between gasps of breath. “He didn’t kick me out this time, though. I left. I don’t think he loves me anymore, if he ever even did.”

“Oh, Steve.”

They sit there together for a while, until Castiel finally has himself under some semblance of control. “Where’s Tanya?” he asks.

“She’s staying at a friend’s for a birthday party. She’s growing up so fast.”

“Wow,” Castiel breathes, thinking of the time when she was so small, Castiel could rock her in his arms. “I’d like to see her, if I could.”

“She’ll be back for breakfast tomorrow. You can come with me to pick her up.” Nora claps her hands on her thighs and gets up to get them food. She comes back to the couch with plates piled high, and Castiel takes one with a watery smile.

“Thank you.”

“So tell me more about what you’ve been up to,” Nora says, and Castiel laughs.

Finally, after a few days of idyllic sereneness, he tells Nora he’s leaving, and he goes back to Dean, because that’s where everything always seems to circle around to. Castiel slowly opens the bunker door and creeps down the steps. Alcohol permeates the air, and the smell makes Castiel wrinkle his nose, another pang of a reminder that his powers are fading. He sees Dean face down on the war room table, a puddle of drool collected by his cheek. He does his best to overlook the cracked plastic whiskey bottle beside him. He slips past Dean and walks to his room, opening his night stand drawer and running a finger along the side of a plastic cassette before slipping it into an inside pocket of his trench coat. Castiel walks back out to the war room, and he stays there for a long moment, deliberating.

Castiel has always trusted in a plan greater than himself, has always been a warrior of heaven, and once upon a time, he thought an awful lot of himself. That feeling of confidence had evaporated away more and more with every mistake he had made over the years with the Winchesters, but looking at Dean now, Castiel clings to the self-worth he has left and climbs back up the stairs. He leaves the bunker, the door whispering shut behind him, and he looks up at a bird singing in a tree with rustling leaves. He’s not sure what’s going to happen now, but he’s always been good at making it up as he goes.

**Author's Note:**

> this episode ripped out my heart and took a chunk out of it while it was still beating  
and, yes, I have a very soft spot for Nora, check out [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19811014) work if you want to see more!


End file.
